Hackerspace focus: Make, Hack, Void

Continuing our focus on Australia’s vibrant hackerspace scene, this time it’s the turn of Canberra-based Make, Hack, Void or MHV for short. Starting out as a geek community in 2009, in a familiar tale of hackerspace growing pains, MHV outgrew Alastair D’Silva’s purpose-built three car garage/hackerspace. In an inspiring tale for other would-be hackerspaces, MHV turned to the local government for help and secured a large disused workshop near the centre for town at a knock-down rate. What a result!

“Our original demographic was very heavy with software and electronic engineers,” Alastair told us, adding that MHV is adding new faces with additional skill sets. Even now there’s a wide variety of projects under way at MHV thanks to members interested in projects from fibreglass moulds to FPGA electronics, Arduinos to DIY pizza ovens.

“I find hackerspaces are a great motivator to actually completing projects, as I tend to leave things in a “good enough” state (or worse) without driving force of having to present it to others,” Alastair reckons, adding that he enjoys the community of like-minded members. “They are a great resource for assistance, and also as sounding board to bounce ideas off,” he said.

We’re delighted to welcome another fabulous Australian hackerspace to the Faire. Make, Hack, Void will be showing off the MHVBoard, their own Arduino clone and presenting details of the MHV AVR runtime library. Alastair will also be presenting a walk-through of implementing simple projects using MHV’s home grown hardware and software tools. Geeks miss out at your peril!